Thanks to the Legislature’s action to pass a series of reforms, including lift the statewide cap on charter schools, New York overcame its first-round stumbles and is among the ten winners of Round 2 of Race to the Top.
That $700 million you’ve heard so much about? Arne Duncan’s reaching for his check book. (Okay, credit card.)
The money will fund stronger tests and curricula, new data systems, improved teacher trainings, and school turnaround projects—plus an easing of the budget crunch for schools and districts. (See GothamSchools’ handy overview here.)
Saturday’s NY Post reported the answer to a critical question: since over 90% of NYC charter school students are Black or Hispanic, what do this year’s generally sobering test scores say about their performance compared to Black and Hispanic students in district schools?
The Post only summarized, but here are all the grade-by-grade comparisons:
The Post article was mistaken on one fact: New York City charter schools have a higher, not lower, enrollment of low-income students than district schools citywide--whether that's defined by eligibility for free/reduced lunch or for free lunch only.
People sometimes ask me why the charter sector is so intent on building political power, including working with charter school parents to increase the effectiveness of their advocacy. The simple answer is that families want—and deserve to get—the best for their kids. Parents can exert enormous influence over public policy, even those policies that seemingly go against the “values” and voting records of our legislators.
There’s a great example of this in the Wall Street Journal today. Barbara Martinez reports on the beneficiaries of the City’s private placement system for special education students. This is basically a voucher system sanctioned by federal law. It gives parents the right to send their children to private schools on the taxpayers’ dime if parents can show the public schools can’t provide an adequate education. The program is hard to access for many families because it requires hiring expensive lawyers to sue the City for these placements. As a result, according to the WSJ, it disproportionately benefits families in more affluent neighborhoods. This year, there were 859 requests for private placements from District 2 (think Tribeca, the Village, and the Upper East Side) and fewer than 100 from District 9 (South Bronx).
The cost of these placements is enormous—$116 million a year—and the private schools in which children are placed are allowed to be non-unionized and for-profit.
Bottom line? Here in NYC we’ve essentially got a voucher system tilted to serving students from wealthier families by sending them to non-union, for-profit private schools at a huge cost to taxpayers.
Yet despite this, the system persists without much protest. Certainly, we’ve never heard a peep from the self-styled defenders of public education--people like Assemblywoman Deborah Glick or Senators Bill Perkins and Velmanette Montgomery. Nor have we heard from the teachers unions.
And that might seem odd at first because these electeds are the same ones that take every opportunity to denounce charter schools as a drain on traditional schools, even though they are public and not for profit, serve largely low-income and non-white families, and use fewer public dollars to do it.
So, why the silence? Two words: Parent power. Legislators and teachers unions do not dare take on parents of special education students. Those parents have made an effective case for having options. They want the very best for their kids.
Charter school parents want options too; they just need that same power. After all, they have the same right to schools that will meet their children’s needs, and they’re demanding the same support from their elected officials. That’s why they’re getting organized, publicly and without apology. And if they can’t get support from present electeds, my guess is they’ll work to elect others who will.
The State Ed Department announced the winners of federal Charter School Program grants today and all of them are in NYC. Eight new charter schools won grants totaling more than $3 million. The competitive dollars are awarded based on the strength of schools’ applications and their plans to use the money to bolster their educational programs. The fact that all the grantees are in NYC says a lot about the potential of schools opening up here. This year’s winners are:
The State Education Department has always had the power to authorize charter schools… but for the past decade, the role of “quality authorizer” has been played mostly by SUNY and here in the City, by the Chancellor’s office. But in issuing its Request for Proposals (RFP) today—a process mandated under the new Charter School law—I’m happy to see the State Ed Department is finally acting like an authorizer and wants to be a part of building up NY’s reputation as a model charter sector.
While there are surely improvements still to make, e.g., applicants still must spend time on figuring out how to integrate family and consumer science into curriculums—a distraction when there is so much work to be done with core subjects, anyone who cares about chartering as a way of creating great public schools should applaud changes like these:
For the first time, SED will interview all applicant teams in person. That interview is one of the most critical steps in the application process, allowing SED to meet the people behind the written application and evaluate their capacity for carrying it out.
The pointless, time-consuming “curriculum crosswalk” is gone. For years, SED has required charter school planning teams to spend 500 pages plotting the curriculum of each grade against state standards—before most had even hired a curriculum coordinator. It was a tedious and expensive exercise in copying and pasting that had nothing to do with actual school quality, made worse by what came next: weeks of line-by-line quibbling from a rotating cast of bureaucrats. Actual alignment to standards is critical, but this tree-destruction ritual had nothing to do with it.
Planning teams have time to… plan. For example, in the past, SED required planning teams to submit a human resource handbook as part of the charter application. While this is a critical document for running a school, that was like asking cooks to serve dinner before they had even bought the ingredients. Now planning teams can thoughtfully build such policies once the key actors are in place, instead of blindly assembling something to check a box on the application.
There are realistic requirements for facilities. In the absence of state funding for charter school facilities, finding a space is a difficult task. In the past, SED demanded that planning teams identify a facility before being approved to operate; now they just have to show they have the capacity to locate a school site.
In sum, the RFP shows SED’s new seriousness about authorizing high-quality charter schools. Its focus has shifted from paper shuffling and check lists to looking carefully at whether a group has a high likelihood of success. SED’s standards for authorization are also going up so planning teams will have to meet a higher bar for approval.
None of this should come as a surprise. Sally Bachofer, the director of the Office of Innovation at SED (who undoubtedly has spent her July toiling on this) and Senior Deputy Commissioner King (who knows something about what it takes to run a great public school) are committed to having SED be a quality authorizer. Sally did this work in Massachusetts and across the country for the National Association of Charter School Authorizers; she has earned a reputation for toughness.
Even so, the quick results are still somewhat shocking to those of us who battled with the behemoth from the outside—for eleven years in my case.
The timing of these reforms is good also. While not a game-changer, an RFP likes this tells the federal government that SED and New York State are serious about maintaining a high-quality charter sector—and that can only help us at decision time in the Race to the Top.
In today's WSJ, Jacob Gershman reports on how charter school supporters are catching up to the state’s teachers unions when it comes to campaign donations.
"What we're clearly seeing from so-called reformers is that they're putting money out there early and clearly threatening to use big dollars against people who don't toe the line," [NYSUT president Richard] Iannuzzi said.
Threats, toes, lines… sounds pretty bad. So how will the unions be spending their money?
Labor leaders, who are sitting on millions in political cash and have far more manpower, say they are waiting to see if lawmakers block education cuts before they unleash more money and roll out endorsements.
No need to toe any line, of course. But let’s just see how you vote.
On a related note, don’t miss Kim Gittleson's data-rich rundown of the UFT's political coffers. (And for the record, charter advocates also oppose education cuts—including cuts to charter schools.)
"When Ann and Jonathan Binstock started shopping for an apartment in Manhattan in 2007, their first call was not to a real estate broker. Instead, they hired an education consultant, to show them where the best schools for their daughter, Ellen, were. After the consultant suggested the most desirable zones, they chose a two-bedroom apartment near Public School 87 on the Upper West Side. Public records show it cost $1.975 million."
School leaders and board members from the 27 new charter schools opening in NYC this fall attended a welcome celebration at the Tweed Courthouse on June 23. This is always a proud moment for the Charter Center because we've worked with so many of the teams from the very beginning. This year's group is a great mix of neighborhood-based schools and replications of highly successful charters. We're going to profile each of the new schools in a web series called "Grand Opening." Check out the first installment about the Dr. Richard Izquierdo Health and Science Charter School in the Bronx.
Yogi Berra stopped by Bronx Charter School for Children in the South Bronx Thursday afternoon. The baseball legend met with a small group of students and staff at the high performing K-5 school located less than a mile from Yankee Stadium. The school’s executive director Karen Drezner told me, “The visit was really special because we want our students to understand the history and significance of their neighborhood and, like Yogi Berra, to give back to their community.” Berra didn’t offer up any of his famous “Yogi-isms,” but he did hand out Yankees caps and a big thank you to the students for hosting him. Check out the photo:
Elena Day Director, School Operations "They [charter schools] show that a child’s background doesn’t matter; what matters is the quality of work put into educating each child."
New York City Charter School Center, 111 Broadway, Suite 604, New York, NY 10006 tel: 212.437.8300 | fax: 212.227.2763 | info@nycCharterSchools.org
